Author

Laura Paskus
Laura Paskus is a longtime environment reporter based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Currently, she is the environment reporter for New Mexico PBS, and produces the monthly series, “Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future.” Her book “At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate,” was published in September 2020 by the University of New Mexico Press. Paskus has been a journalist since 2002, when she began her career at High Country News. She has freelanced for local, regional, and national outlets and also worked as managing editor for Tribal College Journal, a publication of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, as a reporter and producer for KUNM-FM in Albuquerque, and as the environment reporter for New Mexico Political Report. She also edits New Mexico-based stories about the oil and gas industry and climate change for Capital & Main. She’s a board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and formerly served as president of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Poor pay and benefits deplete U.S. firefighting workforce
By: Laura Paskus - April 27, 2022
When wildfire season roared into New Mexico in mid-April — even earlier than usual in our warming world — firefighters answered the calls for help. They showed up across the state to race the dry winds driving flames into the mountains, along the Rio Grande, and into neighborhoods and across ranches. Some of the men […]
Memory of a River: In another hot year, we fail the Rio Grande
By: Laura Paskus - September 18, 2021
In a crinkly government report from the 1920s, two photographs show what the Rio Grande looked like south of Socorro near the town of San Marcial, the remnants and memories of which are submerged today under the sludge and sand of Elephant Butte Reservoir’s northern extent. Taken from a bluff above the Rio Grande, the […]